Collision, With Certainty
by Golden Snowflake
Summary: Two souls, as radiant and captivating as stars, their destinies intertwined. Their light changes the lives it touches, their gravitational pull molding the world around them. Their clash is inevitable. The aftermath of the collision will transform their very souls. A collection of drabbles for BakuDeku/KatsuDeku Positivity Week 2018.
1. Genesis

genesis

 **jen** - _uh_ -sis

\- _noun_ , plural gen-e-sis

1\. an origin, creation, or beginning.

* * *

Izuku isn't sure when it started.

Truth be told, it probably started the day they met. This is the scattered conclusion his mind returns to on the sleepless nights when he's not wary enough to herd his thoughts elsewhere. The undercurrents were always there – the bones of this monster that looms behind Izuku with every breath. That's how he sees it now; not a new, creeping growth over the tangled and cluttered mess they've made, but the final layer of what began when they were so little they could barely spell their own names. A logical step in a journey the length of their very lives.

He doesn't know when the piercing, meaningful looks and the way Katsuki's voice cracks with emotion every time they speak morphed into what they are now. He can't pinpoint the moment at which the weight of Katsuki's eyes became frightening and overwhelming in this wholly new, wholly uncomfortable way.

Izuku was always terrified of Kacchan.

That's why, when speaking to him of being in close proximity to him starts to make Izuku's face heat up and his lungs try to burst out of his chest, he is able to adapt. It's not all that different from the fluttering awe he felt for Katsuki when they were little, from the simple, animalistic fear when Katsuki hated him.

Yet in a way, this is something different altogether.

It's a party, sort of: a get-together not all that different from the way they all hang out normally save for the fact that Sero and Mina arranged it and Kaminari found alcohol. The blonde and the pink-haired girl have been making sure all evening that neither Iida nor Yaoyorozu get their hands on a cup with anything in it other than soda after deciding there was no way either would stand for such mischief. Most of the lights in the small red room are off, and the majority of the class has gravitated toward the corner where Hagakure has plugged her phone into a small speaker. The din is a cozy one, rising and falling with the excited chatter of teenagers emboldened by the fuzzy warmth of alcohol.

Izuku hovers in the kitchen, watching them through the doorway.

Oddly, the buzz feels a little like One for All. It ripples through his limbs, ebbing warmly as it prickles against his cheeks and his fingertips like minuscule bursts of static. It buoys him in turns, lifting and emboldening him in one moment and turning his stomach with liquid uncertainty the next. He listens to Uraraka excitedly recounting something that happened at the mall a few days prior from where she sits in the semi-circle of young adults and Izuku looks down at the syrupy liquid in his cup, counting his heartbeats.

As if the very atoms in his skin were attuned to his presence, Izuku knows it's Bakugou entering the room before he even looks.

Kacchan's angular face is pink from the alcohol, making his sharp red eyes glow the same color as Izuku's heated, uneasy insides. Midoriya stiffens and his eyes widen. Unhelpfully, the dull fizzle of the beer drifting through him turns the usual lump of anxiety into a cloying interest that pulls in the direction where the blonde is standing.

They stare at each other for a long moment, utterly still. Izuku feels bare before him, stripped of confidence and bravado and pretense. Under the weight of his sharp, intimidating gaze, Izuku is nothing but the child he still holds inside him, small and insecure and full of fierce, unfaltering faith.

Katsuki steps toward him, closing the distance between them, holding Izuku's stare where he leans against the counter.

His lips part with a breath, blood-colored eyes as captivating and unreadable as ever, and takes his hands out of his pockets. He smells like sweat and burnt sugar and something sharply alive.

Izuku doesn't know exactly what this new layer of their relationship is, but at he leans up to meet Kacchan, he knows that this is just the beginning.


	2. Comfort

comfort

 **kuhm** -fert

\- _noun_

4\. relief in affliction, consolation; solace

6\. a person or thing that gives consolation

8\. a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety.

* * *

It had been a hell of a day.

Three attacks, coordinated on locations where meetings had been held in support of less regulations on heroes. It didn't look like a coincidence. The media had leapt to fan the flames almost as soon as the charges had been detonated, accusing politicians of funding the villains, asking the public if they thought the more entrepreneurial heroes had funded it themselves. A woman's femur had been broken when a hero made a judgment call to get her out of the rubble as soon as possible, and within three hours, her lawyer was holding a press conference, verifying that she was, indeed, going to press charges. Deku had rescued three children, one of whom would likely never recover from the psychological effects of what he'd watched play out from where he was trapped in an enclosed playground.

One of the bombs was planted directly next to a pet store.

Every bone in Izuku's body ached. He mumbled his way through two reporter ambushes as nausea and exhaustion pushed in swells up his throat. He had taken two dogs to a nearby veterinary clinic on foot, and could tell from the woman's face as he gingerly deposited it onto the table that the smaller of the two was unlikely to survive the night.

Nobody spoke to him at the agency as he closed the door behind him and limped to the locker room.

Calling a cab didn't cross his mind as he brushed his bangs out of his eyes with a badly rattling hand and started toward his apartment. The cacophonous roar of emergency vehicles and rubble settling and screams and car alarms and door alarms – his head was pulsing with it, twanging through the nerves in his molars. He felt simultaneously hollow and on the cusp of crying or screaming from being so full of noise. He pushed his scarred hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt and ducked his head when a small group of people walked past.

Days like this threatened to break him. They chipped away at his core, making his chest ache with the inescapable pain and confusion and terror in the eyes of those he cradled close to him. Days like this seeped into his wounds like something toxic and corrosive and came out of him in the form of screams as he punched holes in the walls, nightmares, and paralyzing numbness that drained the color from the world.

A sob threatened to tear through his closed-up throat and turned into a painful lump in his gut when he swallowed it back down.

He didn't actively notice when his feet took him toward another part of the district.

The lights were on in the windows he was looking for, the apartments here older and much nicer than his. Izuku closed the old, iron gate and found himself jogging around back, taking the first flight of stairs two at a time. The metal groaned and creaked, ringing out in the relative quiet.

He didn't let himself think as he pulled his hood down and approached the door, because he knew that if he did, the anxiety would freeze him in his tracks. The breath he sucked in caught in his windpipe, on the heaviness of his lungs that threatened to choke him. He knocked five times.

A very slow eight seconds passed as Izuku stood in the evening chill.

When he opened the door and his eyes flitted up to Izuku's, that guarded, neutral expression became one of barely-concealed shock. The familiar set of his shoulders and the striking color of his eyes gripped Izuku's soul and pulled _hard_. It felt a little like elation; a bit like he was one second closer to falling apart.

"Deku."

It was hushed, Katsuki unmoving as he stared at Izuku.

"Hi, Kacchan." His own voice sounded foreign and very distant. He could see the ripple that went over Katsuki's skin at his words. He drew in a breath, held it. Resisted the urge to look away from the blonde's piercing gaze. "Can I come in?"

Katsuki's lips parted. His eyes flickered down Izuku's frame as if reading him, then wandered back up.

He swallowed, looked away. Shifted and shoved a hand in the pocket of his jeans. "Sure, yeah."

He stepped aside, and Izuku's heart leapt to his throat as he walked inside.


	3. Space

space

speys

\- _noun_

1\. the unlimited or incalculably great three-dimensional realm or expanse in which all material objects are located and all events occur.

3\. the extent or area in two dimensions

9\. linear distance; a particular distance

* * *

Warm nothingness ebbs and gives way slowly, fading to let in the coolness of the air, the strong, unmoving warmth curling around him. The steady, bone-deep waves of his breath rock him while the heavy ache in his muscles keeps him weighted and safe.

All is well here. A profound, blissful contentment stretches endlessly around this quiet, unmarked place where he currently exists.

And yet, something that takes notice of the real and tangible things around him whispers, telling him that something is significant. Izuku debates without really debating and decides to listen.

He rises, breaching the surface of consciousness. The world forms in splotches; swaths of shape and space and muted color. Sensation ripples outward and he feels himself curled beneath his covers, warm and sore and exhausted. His muscles feel like jelly and his tailbone aches.

Breath floods into his hair and suddenly he remembers. There is a lean, strong body behind him, sweat cloying between them where they are pressed together. The scent of burnt sugar and musk clings to Izuku and bathes him in an aura of blissful happiness that tugs low in his stomach and makes a smile leap to his face. The hand draped over his side twitches and Izuku's heart speeds up. That giddy feeling radiates outward, warming him until his chest feels tight and inexplicably shimmery.

For so, so long they revolved around each other, magnetic, repelling, pushing each other away and pushing each other forward. Fighting one another off while gravity drew them toward the same goal.

For so long, Kacchan was unreachable. His presence and his scrutiny electrified Izuku, dazzlingly painful, compelling him to _move_ , to fight and climb and excel despite any force that tried to hold him back. The inevitable gravity of a shared dream pulled them back together again and again, and every time, they fought until the space between them was as cold and as wide as the time before.

Now, the space between them is almost nothing.

The warmth of Kacchan's body sinks into his skin and fills the darkness between the sheets where they are cocooned. The firm, sharp planes of his body press to Izuku's back, long legs folded unevenly into the crook of his knees. Kacchan's breath flows over his neck and sinks into his hair. One scarred, beautiful hand is brushing over his stomach. They're fitted together like they belong like this.

Kacchan enshrouds him like Izuku is a belonging he wants to protect.

Sleep tugs at him from the edges of his mind, and Izuku knows that the tide will soon come in and pull him back under. He feels it down to his bones, thick and heavy, settling in the bruises mottling his shoulders and neck, dully throbbing in his thighs and the base of his spine and inside him. He observes it calmly, not letting himself fear the heady temptation of slipping unconscious with Kacchan wrapped around him.

He doesn't want to miss a second of this, of the strong peacefulness of Katsuki's slumber; of the strange fullness of his room that always felt oddly empty until Kacchan's presence.

And yet, despite the fact that this was the first time he had fallen asleep in Katsuki's arms, his body had melted and relented, and he felt the most safe and profoundly content he ever had in his life.

Izuku lets out a shuddering breath, heavy with happiness so unbearable it hurts, and snuggles against the warm body behind him, closing his eyes and letting unconsciousness envelop him once more.


End file.
